MacRumors

Orange announced pricing for the iPhone in France today.

Launch photos from Mac4ever

Orange will be selling the iPhone for 399 euro along with one of four plans with prices ranging from 49 euros to 119 euros per month. All plans include unlimited internet and visual voicemail.

Customers who don't wish to subscribe to those particular plans can instead pay 549 euro and use another Orange plan. Finally for 649 euro, customers can purchase an iPhone with no required contract or obligation to Orange. The iPhone itself, however, will still need to be unlocked. With all options (399, 549, 649 euro), any customer may unlock the iPhone for an addition 100 euro during the first six months. After six months, the iPhone may be unlocked for free in accordance with French law.

Wired has a revealing article on Universal Music Group's CEO Doug Morris and his views on the digital music industry. The article provides insight into how only an outsider like Apple could accomplish what the music industry was unwilling and unable to create -- a successful digital distribution system.

Morris's attitude is shockingly revealing as to the underlying motives of the music industry and how it has affected their decisions.

[Morris] wants to wring every dollar he can out of anyone who goes anywhere near his catalog. Morris has never accepted the digital world's ruling ethos that it's better to follow the smartest long-term strategy, even if it means near-term losses. As far as he's concerned, do that and someone, somewhere, is taking advantage of you. Morris wants to be paid now, not in some nebulous future.

It was this attitude that prevented the record labels from letting go of the CD and embracing online distribution. To be fair, however, Morris claims that nothing could have been done differently:

"There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Even now, their major efforts are not intended to satisfy any particular need or necessarily build a long term model, but instead to wrest the control they inadvertently gave to Apple with the creation of the iTunes Music Store. iTunes remains responsible for the largest portion of Universal's digital music sales.

To counter, Morris is presently involved in a making their Total Music plan a reality. Their plan is to offer users a "free" subscription plan for unlimited access to all their music. The plans would be subsidized by hardware vendors interested in taking a piece of the action from Apple's iPod and iTunes.

The author points out that this plan may be ignoring a strong consumer preference for flexibility and simply be trading in one proprietary format for another, but Morris doesn't appear to care:

Unfortunately, Total Music will almost certainly require some form of DRM, which in the end will perpetuate the interoperability problem. Morris likely doesn't care. He is more committed to Total Music -- or any other plan that allows protection -- than he is to a future where music can truly be played across any platform, at any time. "Our strategy is to have the people who create great music be paid properly," he says. "We need to protect the music. I know that."

The big industry news today comes from Verizon when they announced that in 2008 that they would offer wireless service plans open to any application or device.

[Verizon] said it will publish early next year technical standards for the development community, which are necessary for designing software, applications and devices that can run on its network. The carrier said that any device that meets the minimum technical standards will be activated on the network. It hopes to have new devices and applications available to customers by the end of next year.

Verizon expects the new service to open up new services and devices and encourage innovation. The service is also aimed at smaller players who would otherwise be unable to offer similar services. Indeed, per Arstechnica, one Verizon exec claimed that even "if someone builds a device in their basement on a breadboard, Verizon will test it and activate it." Pricing is claimed to be reasonable, with no specific restrictions on usage.

This news comes in the wake of Google's Android wireless platform announcement, but is not associated with that initiative. Meanwhile, Verizon still uses a CDMA network, while the iPhone is a GSM device. As a result, it's unlikely this announcement will necessarily have any affect on Apple's iPhone.

Retuers reports on Orange's expectations for iPhone sales in France. Orange expects to sell nearly 100,000 iPhones by the end of 2007 after its launch later this Wednesday.

MacScoop reported on the leaked rate plans for the French iPhone last week. The rate plans were revealed on iphone.orange.fr. Pricing points include 49 euro/mo, 59 euro/mo, 79 euro/mo, and 119 euro/mo.

Orange will also be offering an unlocked iPhone. The Reuters article provides no details on the price of the unlocked iPhone but places it "significantly lower" than the unlocked German iPhone.

The MacScoop report, however, indicates that the French iPhone will be unlockable even before the typical 6 month wait-time for only 100 euro. While on the surface this seems much cheaper than the German pricing, it does not appear that this removes the 2 year contract requirement with Orange. This means that while you can buy an unlocked iPhone in France for 499 euro (399 + 100), the main advantage will be to avoid roaming charges when traveling as you are still contractually obligated to Orange. Meanwhile, the unlocked German iPhone has no contract requirement, but comes at a higher cost. These details have not been confirmed by Orange. Official announcements will be made on Wednesday.

Update: Another reports that France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard claims the unlocked iPhone will be above 500 euro but less than 1000 euro.

Fortune magazine has ranked Steve Jobs as the most powerful person in business in its annual ranking of the 25 most powerful people in business. Fortune also posts an article on The Power of Steve Jobs.

Of course, these types of rankings are very subjective. To support their ranking, Fortune points to Jobs' deep influence on not only the computer industry, but Hollywood, music, retailing, and wireless phones.

Apple has acknowledged to InformationWeek that it has received reports of MacBook hard drive failures and is looking into the problem.

Seagate was not immediately available for comment, but Apple spokesman Cameron Craig said the company was aware that there might be a problem. "We've received a few reports that some MacBook consumer notebooks may have hard drive issues, and we're looking into it," he said.

UK data recovery firm Retrodata earlier this month discovered a flaw in the some hard drives employed in Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. The firm's analysis at that time had indicated that Seagate hard disks in the models with firmware 7.01 were unusually prone to read/write head failures that caused physical gouges in the hard drive platter, making recovery impossible.

Electronista claims that Apple has already started seeding an early version of the iPhone SDK (software development kit) to a few select developers.

The kit is described as "rough versions" of the tools that allow developers to create native applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Electronista is unable to provide many details on the development kit, but claims it "somewhat resembles Google's OpenSocial in that it mediates between the programmer and the iPhone operating system."

This presumably means that the native applications will be "sandboxed" in some way for security and stability concerns. Indeed, their sources claim that there are "clear limits" applied to applications but that even so, at least one major social networking site is interested in creating a native iPhone interface to their site.

Steve Jobs announced that an iPhone/iPod touch SDK would be released in February 2008.

As a followup to a report from 2006, Apple and Burst.com have settled their patent dispute for $10 million dollars.

Burst.com sued Apple over patent claims involving "the delivery of music or video over the Internet 'faster than real-time.'" This involves the technology involved in streaming and delivering video and audio content on the internet as Apple does with iTunes and Quicktime streaming software.

In the settlement, Apple will pay Burst.com a one-time $10 million license fee for its current patent portfolio. Meanwhile, Burst has one existing and three pending DVR patents that do not fall within this agreement. However, the press release explicitly states that Burst will not sue Apple in the future over these DVR technology patents.

Fortune interviews Apple's Vice President of Hardware Product Marketing, Greg Joswiak, about the iPod and the iPhone.

The article covers Apple's marketing and research focus over the years, and does reiterate that Apple will likely be using a digital-signature approach to the upcoming iPhone software developer kit.

One of the things Steve talked about in his open letter is something Nokia's doing, which is requiring a digital signature. That way if there's something wrong with an application, you have a way to track it back to where it came from.

Joswiak also claims that one of the main advantages Apple has over their competitors is looking ahead to the future:

Our competitors tend to put the cross hairs on where we are now, and by the time they come up with a product that tries to match where we are now, were beyond them. Were one or two generations beyond, moving faster than they are.

MacNotes.de (German) provides early notes and experiences from customers who have bought unlocked iPhones in Germany.

The first SIM-unlocked iPhones went on sale in Germany on November 21st with a considerable (600 euro) premium over the usual SIM-locked iPhones. "Unlocked" simply means that the phone is not tied to any one network provider (such as AT&T or T-Mobile) and can accept any SIM card.

The unlocking process is as follows: You simply buy a regular iPhone ("locked") and pay the additional premium (999 euro total). Your iPhone's IMEI number is recorded and sent to Apple. After 24 hours or so, Apple's database is updated. At this stage, once you connect your iPhone to iTunes, the iPhone is automatically unlocked in a process that is described as taking only "seconds". You can then proceed to sync your now-unlocked iPhone with iTunes. The firmware remains at version 1.1.2 after the unlock. The process raises a number of questions and also opens the possibility of unauthorized unlocking solutions to become readily available.

The sale of unlocked iPhones in Germany was forced by a temporary injunction against T-Mobile, and could potentially be overturned at a future court date.

Regardless, Apple is required to offer unlocked iPhones in France after 6 months according to French law, so the infrastructure must remain available in iTunes. The iPhone will launch in France on November 29th.

PCJoint.com points to ongoing research by Apple into multi-touch technologies. The most recent patent applications reveal techniques to recognize both palm and finger contacts in order to react appropriately.

PCJoint summarizes the possibilities:

- Need to move a cursor across the screen? Just slide your finger and it goes.
- Want to enter text? Just start typing and the text is there. You even get the touch feedback as if really pressing the keys.
- Need to erase some text? Use the backspace or just slide the finger backwards
- Have to write or draw something? Just pretend you hold a stylus or pen in your hand and start writing/drawing.
- If that is still not good enough, pick up the real stylus and start writing with it.
- All these cool touch gestures that Apple has implemented in iPhone and is exploring further? You know, scrolling, zooming, rotating & moving objects, etc; They are here too
- 3D object manipulation? Select a few 3D objects on the screen and use all 5 fingers on both hands to play with them.
- Want to take a break to relax and afraid to put your hands on the touch surface? Dont worry Multi-touch 2.0 thingie knows that and does not pay attention to your resting palms or fingers

This should come as no surprise to those who have been following Apple's patent applications as well as their previous acquisition of Fingerworks. Previous patent applications have also suggested the possibility of one surface acting for many different functions (such as typing and gestures).

Some of these sales are over. Parallels sale remains ongoing (see below), Amazon and MacMall still have $75-$150 rebates on many Macs.

Popular online retailers such as BestBuy, CompUSA, CircuitCity.com, and Amazon are now participating in online Black Friday sales.

Apple Store
Sale is Over
Apple's online store and retail stores are participating as well. Apple's 5th Avenue Store was the first to open at midnight on the east coast. Prices on select Macs and iPods are discounted as follows:

iMac: $1148 ($51 off), $1398 ($101 off), $1698 ($101 off), $2198 ($101 off)
MacBook: $1048 ($51 off), $1198 ($101 off), $1398 ($101 off)
iPod Classic: $228 ($21 off), $318 ($31 off)
iPod Nano: $138 ($11 off), $188 ($11 off)
iPod shuffle: $68 ($11 off)

Free laser engraving on iPods. Also discounts on many accessories, including Airport Extreme Base Stations ($21 off) and Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse ($11 off). Discounts can not be stacked with educational discounts.

Apple Related Deals
The following deals are of genuine interest, but purchases made through the links will also support MacRumors.

MacMall
Sale is over but some discounts remain
Up to 22% off Macs and iPods in their 48 hour Thanksgiving sale. Pay attention what you are buying, however. The biggest discounts ("Closeouts") are on the previous versions of hardware, but even new hardware has reasonable discounts. For example, the older MacBook Pro can be had for $600 off, but even the newest MacBook Pro can be had for $300 off ($150 instant, $150 mail in). Discounts available for all Mac models and iPod models.

MacBook: $974 ($125 off), $1162 ($137 off), $1341 ($158 off)
iMac: $1135 ($64 off), $1354 ($145 off), $1628 ($171 off), $2099 ($200 off)
MacBook Pro: $1799 ($220 off), $2235 ($264 off), $2499 ($300 off)
Mac mini: $544 ($55 off), $744 ($55 off)
Mac Pro: $2235 ($264 off)
iPod Touch: $269.99 ($29.01 off), $359.99 ($39.01 off)

Update: If you can't get through to MacMall, Amazon has similar deals. Instant savings + Mail in Rebate.

Parallels
Through our affiliate vendor, Digital River, you can get $10 Off Parallels Desktop 3.0 or $10 Off on Parallels 3.0 Upgrade.

$100 off Mac Office 2004 + Free Upgrade to Mac Office 2008
Sale is Over
Microsoft's Business unit is offering a $100 rebate (rebate PDF) in addition to the Super Suite Deal which lets you upgrade from Mac Office 2004 to Mac Office 2008 for the price of shipping and handling.

Details: November 23rd only (must be dated on receipt), buy Office 2004 Mac Standard, Standard Upgrade or Student and Teacher and send in $100 Mail in rebate (PDF). Then submit the Super Suite Deal to upgrade to Office 2008 (when released) for shipping and handling.

Update 2: Parallels sale remains ongoing (see above), Amazon and MacMall still have $75-$150 rebates on many Macs.

To be in compliance with a court ruling, Deutsche Telekom announced today that they will immediately start selling an unlocked iPhone without contract for 999 euro (US $1,477). The iPhone will still be sold, as before, with 2 year contract for 399 euro ($US $590).

Bloomberg reports that customers who purchased the iPhone in Germany after November 19th may have their iPhone unlocked for free. Existing German iPhone customers can reportedly also receive the unlock for a fee.

Prior to this, the only unlocked iPhones in existence have been "hacked" with 3rd party applications. This introduces legitimate unlocked iPhones into the marketplace that will presumably withstand future iPhone software updates.